Breakdown of Literary Periods

by Prof. Richard Kroll

It is common in the study of literature to talk about literary "periods." This is really little more than a useful heuristic device, but for the purposes of an overview, "periods" do help to conceptualize some valuable distinctions between different literary purposes, forms, and arguments.

Here are some groupings:

1. 1660-1700: The Restoration (Age of Dryden)
2. 1700-1740: The "Augustan" period (Age of Pope and Swift)
   1700-1750: The growth of sensibility
3. 1750-1789: The Age of Johnson
   
   
4. 1789-1800: The Age of Revolution (the advent of Romanticism)
   The early Romantics (Coleridge and Wordsworth)
5. 1800-1815/32: The Napoleonic Era
   The late Romantics (Shelley, Byron, Keats)
   
   
6. 1832-1850: The Age of Reform (The early Victorians)
7. 1850-1900: The late Victorians and "Fin de siecle"
   
   
8. 1900-1914: The Edwardian Era
   The advent of Modernism
   
   
9. 1914-1918: The First World War
10. 1918-1945: The Crisis of Modernism
11. 1939-1945: The Second World War
    
    
12. 1945-present: The Post-Modern period.

Remember that these categories are not absolute--you can make up your own if they help you to package the literature you read.